


Russian Lessons

by ring_nebula



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ring_nebula/pseuds/ring_nebula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Солнце моей жизни, потому что ты не поймешь = light of my life, because you wouldn’t understand</p><p>мой птенчик = my little bird</p><p>Доброе утро, зайчик! = good morning, bunny!</p></blockquote>





	Russian Lessons

It’s Thursday movie night, and on the screen are the end credits of Star Trek. Clint sits atop Tony’s largest speaker, while the other Avengers have settled in their customary spots on the cushy L-shaped sofa in front of the gigantic movie screen.

“Hey, Tasha,” says Clint, hopping down from his perch. “How come I’ve never heard you speak Russian?"

“Солнце моей жизни, потому что ты не поймешь,” Natasha says, arching an eyebrow.

Bruce smirks.

“What the hell does that mean?” Clint asks.

“Figure it out for yourself, мой птенчик.”

With that, Natasha exits the room. Clint looks over in confusion at Bruce, who’s struggling to stifle a full-out grin.

“Did she just insult me?”

Tony frowns.

“I don’t know,” he says contemplatively. “But I will soon. Steve, I’ll be in the lab if you need me.”

Tony dashes out of the room, a mad glint in his eye that tells the rest that they’ll probably be eating breakfast with omni-lingual robots tomorrow.

Steve vacates his spot with a sigh.

“Sorry, everyone; I should go make sure he doesn’t do anything too drastic. Good night.”

“I do not understand why you take offense,” booms Thor. “The lady Widow spoke the truth, did she not?”

“I wouldn’t know!” says Clint, storming off.

***

Six hours later, Steve knocks gently on the door to Tony’s lab. He can feel vibrations through the soundproof glass, and expects Tony to be blasting hard rock as usual. He’s taken aback when the door slides open and he hears the sounds of a man narrating something in Russian.

Tony’s back is turned, but Steve assumes he’s working on something mechanical and is surprised again when Tony spins in his chair to reveal a tablet covered in Cyrillic letters.

“What’s going on?” Steve asks as soon as the audio stops.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to read The Master and the Margarita for a while. Figured I’d just, you know, two birds, one stone it by listening in Russian.”

“And you decided to learn Russian because...”

“It’s a useful language! Russia’s a big place, plenty of people speak Russian, wouldn’t want to be caught unawares, right?

“And the real reason is?”

“I can’t stand not being able to understand Natasha.”

“That’s better. But have you checked the clock recently?”

“Oh, yeah, hm. I should probably get to sleep soon.”

“Try now. I’m not going to sleep until you do.”

“Fine. Let me just take my tablet with me so I can brush up on my Russian while you brush your teeth.”

“Nope. You’ve done enough cultural exchange for tonight. The bedroom’s a tech-free zone, remember?”

“Now, that’s funny, because I distinctly remember you enjoying a particular piece of tech that I brought into the bedroom.”

Steve blushes brightly but soldiers on anyway. “That was the exception that proved the rule. Up to bed, immediately, no tablet, no phone, nothing.”

“That’s a logical fallacy!” says Tony as Steve drags him bodily out of the workshop.

“We can debate it in the morning. Do I have to carry you?”

Tony pouts. “No.”

“Good.”

Tony gets into bed and falls asleep with little argument after that, and Steve is on the edge of slipping off when Tony starts muttering, startling Steve into wakefulness. Tony talking in his sleep is not an unusual occurrence; what concerns Steve is that Tony is speaking Russian, agitatedly.

Steve slips out of bed, trying to make as little noise as possible and grabs the laptop Tony had given him, knowing Tony’d give him hell for breaking his own rule if he woke. He pulls up a translation website, and lets it capture Tony’s somnal mumblings, but he speaks too quickly and incoherently for the website to do any good.

So Steve instead finds a website that claims to teach basic Russian in two weeks. With Steve’s accelerated learning curve, it should take him a few hours. He has to learn, to make sure that Tony isn’t having nightmares again. They’d stopped a few weeks after Steve and Tony had started to share a bed regularly, but Steve keeps a watchful eye out for any signs they were reappearing.

A few hours of Youtube videos and countless pages of grammar later, Steve has a decent enough grasp of the language to realize that Tony is just conjugating verbs and using them in sentences. His overactive, hyperintelligent brain is using sleep to catalog what he had learned, which seemed to be quite a lot. Steve catches most of the basic sentences, but the vocabulary he picks up was patchy at best, and he certainly wouldn’t be able to listen along to Tony’s Russian audiobook.

Content that his lover isn’t dreaming of horror but grammar, Steve gets into bed beside Tony and falls asleep.

***  
Clint sleeps in the next morning. He feels he’s earned the extra rest. Phil gets up around eight, which is late for him, but an ungodly hour for Clint when they’re not on an op.

Clint staggers out of bed two hours later, roused by the smells of breakfast from the kitchen. As he brushes his teeth, Clint suspects that JARVIS probably lets the smell filter through the vents when he doesn’t feel like dragging Clint out of bed. Certainly the air vents had never borne the aroma of food before. Clint thinks it’s considerate of the AI.

When he finally makes it to the kitchen, he’s marginally more awake and entirely starving. For the first few seconds, when the normal Friday morning chatter fails to resolve into something intelligible, Clint blames the lingering tiredness. Which, he reflects, means that he needs to get into the field more often - time was he snapped awake, alert and ready to go the second someone disturbed him. Phil would say it’s because he feels safe at the Tower, which Clint thinks is hilarious, given the extremely volatile combination of people he lives with.

Psych analysis of his morning habits aside, Clint thinks he’s going crazy when he realises that the entire team appears to be conversing gaily in Russian.

Bruce and Tony discuss something excitedly, while Steve speaks slowly but clearly with Thor. Even Coulson’s in on it, taking directions on how to make blini from Natasha, who is leaning against the fridge.

When Clint walks in, they break off their conversations to chorus,

“Доброе утро, зайчик!"

Clint stares at them stonily for a minute before turning around and going straight back to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Солнце моей жизни, потому что ты не поймешь = light of my life, because you wouldn’t understand
> 
> мой птенчик = my little bird
> 
> Доброе утро, зайчик! = good morning, bunny!


End file.
